let me see you stripped down to the bone
by LadyMoriel
Summary: Some stories end with a fall. This one begins with two. The soldier with the star-spangled shield became a weapon for the other side; decades later, the false prince fell from the sky and became their experiment. The soldier and the prince were never supposed to meet. AU: Steve is Winter Soldier and Loki fell to Earth. Pre-slash. Includes torture, mind control, suicidal thoughts.
1. prologue

Some stories end with a fall. This one begins with two.

The first, in 1945, Europe: the man known as Captain America saved his friend and plummeted from a train himself, his shield left behind and useless, and his strength and his courage were not enough to save him from the men who found him when he was still dazed from the impact, who wanted his strength for their own purposes.

The second, nearly 70 years later: a lost prince looked up at the father-king for whose favor he had caused great destruction and hoped for understanding, forgiveness, love—but he saw none of these things and knew himself for the monster he had tried desperately to deny, and so he let go, and the universe swallowed him up.

The soldier's fall was a short one; the prince's fall was so long he began to believe it would never end. But they both landed, eventually, and their new stories began.

* * *

 _This story was written for MCU AU Fest Round 2, for the prompt "Steve/Loki: Steve falls from the train and becomes the Winter Soldier. 70 years later, Loki falls to Earth and becomes a guinea pig in a HYDRA/SHIELD laboratory where he meets 'the asset'. I want ANGST."_


	2. the prince

_Warnings: This is where the "medical experimentation" tag comes in-this chapter is basically all medical torture. This also takes place immediately after what I firmly believe was a suicide attempt at the end of_ Thor _, so the "suicidal thoughts" tag is relevant here too. Let me know if I should add warnings for anything else specific._

* * *

Loki falls.

He falls and falls and he struggles to believe that anything existed before this, that he has not always been falling (and perhaps that would be better; then he would not have these faces and voices in his head, _know your place, make your father proud, no Loki no Loki no Loki_ ).

Falls are supposed to end. This one was meant to end with his death. And yet it goes on and on, in utter darkness that scours out his mind and shreds away his body. Only when he has forgotten what it is to feel anything else, when he has nearly forgotten his own name or his consciousness apart from the void, does he feel the fall begin to change. There are lights, tiny pinpricks in the black, _stars_ , he has a body again but it is frozen and useless and _so cold_ , colder than he knew was possible, and the numb horror of nothingness gives way to new fear as he realizes he is now falling toward something.

He is going to land. He does not know what he will do if he survives.

The dark gives way to blinding light, the cold to searing heat. He cannot see, cannot hear, cannot move, cannot breathe—

He lands.

Loki feels himself shatter, and for long moments he is sure he is broken in pieces, scattered across whatever realm is unlucky enough to have caught him. Eventually he manages to open one eye, to feel anything about his surroundings other than the pain consuming him. Everything is bright, far too bright, and his eye blurs with tears until he can blink hard enough to see anything.

He is lying on his front, face twisted to the side, something gritty scraping at his exposed skin, and he seems to be at the bottom of a wide pit. The edges look like sunbaked sand and dusty rocks, but nearer to hand the surface looks hard and shiny, like a layer of ice the color of the soil around it. For a moment he stares, vaguely puzzled, and then the clues come together: he is lying in the bottom of his own impact crater, and the shiny stuff is glass made of molten sand created by the heat of his landing.

Next he tries to move, and his vision goes white with agony, and then everything goes away for a little while. When the brightness of the sun drags him back to awareness, he is gasping painfully, a feeling in his chest as if his ribs are snapping with every breath. Knobs of rock and glass are digging into him, pressing against torn skin and broken bones, but he cannot shift to ease the pressure.

Through process of elimination, he discovers he can move his left arm a little and tip his head down slightly, enough to bring some of his body into his field of vision. He sees that his sleeve is in tatters, most of the cloth burned away by the heat of reentry. In some places the leather is seared to his skin, and the metal he can see is melted and distorted. It, too, seems to have melded itself to his flesh.

And the skin itself—

He is confused at first, when he manages to focus. It is not the smooth paleness he is used to, nor the red of burned flesh; but it is not the shade of his monstrous form either. Instead it is deep purple and blotchy, the black fingernails cracked and uneven, and he realizes: this is what burnt Jotun looks like.

For a while he stares at his hand, the broken fingers and cracking skin, and he cannot understand why he is still alive. He is not supposed to be alive. He was meant to die when he let go of Gungnir; the void should have swallowed him up for good, or he should have found an end when he was broken upon the surface of this realm. He wants to be dead, he wants to be _done_ , and instead he is more trapped than ever with the howling emptiness of his heart and the wreck of his body.

Surely the Norns laughed when he was born (if they even watch the births of monsters); surely they are laughing again now, to see how spectacularly he has failed at everything he attempts, up to and including ending his own miserable existence. Perhaps he can turn his face against the sand so he will suffocate—but no, something in his neck seems to be stuck, and even that slight movement is beyond him.

So he waits, because he can do nothing else, and hopes that soon he will die of thirst. Surely frost giants succumb more quickly to heat and dehydration than the Aesir do. Surely he will not simply lie here until Ragnarok.

If he heals enough to drag himself out of the crater, he has no idea what he will do next.

As it turns out, he has no need to worry about that. He doesn't know how long he lies there, tormented by growing thirst and burned still further by the sun, before he hears vehicles approaching. The sun is still high and he still cannot move, so it cannot have been terribly long, and his first reaction is one of sick fear. He is _broken_ , he _cannot move_ , and if he is found like this—

The sound becomes more distinct, tires crunching over gravel and the growl of mechanical engines, accompanied by the tang of something acrid and unpleasant, and he realizes: Midgard. He has fallen to _Midgard_ , of all the useless places, and he has no idea what the humans will try to do with him.

He reaches for his magic and it flickers weakly as he touches it, like a guttering candle flame. He will get no help from that direction. Again he tries with all his remaining strength to move and only succeeds in twitching his fingers, and cold terror washes over him as he fully understands that he is helpless, the humans can do anything they want and he can do _nothing_ to stop them. He cannot even speak.

The vehicle sounds stop, quickly replaced by voices and many footsteps. Loki flexes his hand again, tries to dredge up even a spark of magic, tries to roll to his side so he can at least see what is happening, and he cannot.

The voices are closer now and they are all a jumble, as if the fall has even damaged his grasp of the Allspeak and its gift of language. A few words and phrases come clearly through the haze, "it's alive," "we're clear," "go ahead" and then something sharp jabs Loki's side. He chokes, struggling to breathe past the surge of fresh agony. He wants to react, wants to fight, and he _cannot move_.

There are hands, then, prodding at him, rolling him onto his back, strapping him down against something hard and flat. Bones grind against each other with every movement, and Loki can only gasp emptily past the heaviness in his lungs and long for oblivion.

He is lifted and borne out of the crater, and the sun blinds him; and then he is inside one of the vehicles, staring up at a metal ceiling. Doors slam shut. Nearby a voice says, "Tell Pierce we've got it secured," and then everything jerks into motion, and at long last he slips from agonized consciousness into darkness.

* * *

When he wakes, he is still flat on his back, still staring up at blindingly bright lights, but now the lights are artificial and the surface under him is cold metal. It is cold all along the length of his body, in fact, and he realizes that the remnants of his armor—at least, what could be easily removed—have been peeled away. Thick metal cuffs hold him to the table at his wrists, ankles, and neck, and he still cannot move enough to test them, but he thinks…these humans will underestimate his healing and his strength and then, perhaps, he can free himself.

His captors never allow him a chance to try. Long before he is able to do much more than twitch in his bonds, even before his skin has returned to the pale Aesir tone he has always recognized as his, they return, and they begin their tests.

It doesn't hurt, at first. They measure him, weigh him, inspect all the visible parts of his body. He tries to speak then, but the rasping croak he manages is barely audible, and they ignore him.

When they have examined everything they can, however, the work really begins. First they cut away the pieces of leather and metal that are fused to his flesh, leaving him naked and bleeding under their bright lights and impersonal gazes. He is conscious for part of that process and grateful when his mind goes away again.

He wakes when they begin to cut into him. At first he tries not to scream—they are only humans, they deserve _nothing_ from him—but the knives and needles and probing fingers do not stop, and eventually he cannot prevent the thin moan that seems to be the only noise he is capable of making. They ignore that too.

Very quickly, everything begins to blur together. Sometimes he is lucky enough to be unconscious; more often, he is not, and his ever-present companions are glaring light, cold metal, and pain. Sometimes he is left alone for long stretches of time that he assumes must be night, or at least gaps between shifts; sometimes humans come, usually two or three, sometimes more. The ones he can see all wear masks over their mouths, thin gloves on their hands, caps covering their hair, identical robes covering their clothes, goggles over their eyes; they are all effectively faceless, with almost nothing to distinguish them from each other.

He heals, slowly. They seem fascinated by the process, and at first they do little to impede it. They continuously drain off a little of his blood, and another needle in his arm seems to be supplying him with nutrients of some kind. Other wires lead from sensors attached to his head and chest. They cut open his leg, parting skin and fat and muscle so they can see the shattered bone, and they put some sort of cover on the wound that keeps the tissues pried apart and the bone visible. Otherwise, at first, they let him heal, burned flesh gradually flaking off and returning to its normal color, bones knitting, bruises fading, and he thinks he was right, they are complacent and soon he will be able to escape.

But they don't want him healed; they only want him far enough away from the edge of death to be useful. The more his body pieces itself back together, the more he can feel human drugs polluting his blood, keeping him groggy, dampening his still-damaged magic. He tries to free himself anyway, straining at the cuff on one wrist until it starts to give, and then he learns how they intend to keep him bound when they are not watching him: a bolt of lightning slams through the metal and into his body, crackling through his nerves and jerking his spine off the table in a hard arch. When it finally releases him, he is left dazed and panting, his muscles twitching outside his control and aftershocks of pain still sparking through his nerves. He tries again, some time later, and again the lightning rips through him, on and on until he is barely conscious.

It is after this, too, that they begin to experiment in earnest.

When they found him, he was in a mangled version of his Jotunn form, perhaps from shock or from the endless cold of the void, and it is to this state that the humans want to return him. They spray his limbs with some kind of intensely cold, foggy gas that somehow does not damage the table, his flesh changes in self-defense, and in this way they are able to carry out tests on both of his forms (sometimes at the same time).

He learns that Jotun blood is darker than Aesir, red so deep it is almost purple, and thicker. He did not know this before. He had no reason to know.

They cut into his body to remove bits of him, with needles and knives and delicate instruments he doesn't recognize. They burn him and freeze him, break his fingers to watch them mend, seal a mask over his nose and mouth to determine how long he can survive without air (longer in his Jotunn form, it turns out, but even then his lungs burn and his body instinctively panics as he gasps for breath). They test his skin with substances that burn like acid and others that cause a spreading numbness; they pump other gases through the mask, ones that burn his throat and lungs or make him dizzy and sick or (rarely and wonderfully) send him plummeting into unconsciousness. They pump still more substances into his veins. Some are poisons that turn his entire body into howling, writhing agony; others simply leave him sick and shaky. When he is given something that feels as if a giant fist is squeezing his guts and trying to rip them out, and he feels choking bile start to rise in his throat, he learns the table can be rotated on its longest axis to face downward, presumably not only so he can vomit.

They take one of his teeth from his Aesir form and another from his Jotun form. For this he must be heavily drugged and even more thoroughly restrained, with metal clamps holding his head in place and his jaw open. Then they approach his mouth with their tools, and they carve and drill and pull, and shrieking pain radiates through his skull. (Later, when he has the ability and the courage to check the empty sockets with his tongue, he feels hard little nubs under bloody flesh and realizes they have left him the roots of his teeth—so they should grow back, eventually, but until then the tissue inside is unprotected, and his entire face throbs with every heartbeat.)

They are not deliberately cruel, for the most part. Sometimes they seem to want his pain as part of their tests, but most of the time the pain seems incidental to their purposes. They simply do not care enough to prevent it; they only care that he is unmoving and usually conscious. It is utterly impersonal curiosity, and that is far more terrifying than being held captive by beings hoping to extract from him any knowledge about Asgard. He cannot give them anything, promise them anything, persuade or plead or intimidate, because they are only interested in what his body can reveal to them. They are not interested in anything he can tell them, and they are only irritated when he can no longer keep his screams locked in his throat. These they smother by cutting off his air again, or giving him drugs that put his body entirely beyond his control without dulling the pain.

They talk to each other, sometimes, and the words swirl around him in a haze. They seem excited about whatever information they are pulling from his quivering flesh, and more than once he hears the phrase "winter soldier," which both does and does not seem to refer to him. He has no idea what it means.

It takes only a few periods of unconsciousness to lose nearly all sense of time, but he thinks he has languished here for nearly a month—certainly more than a week—when they wheel in a new machine and position it behind his head where he cannot see. It is humming already, at a pitch just barely below that of ordinary hearing, and Loki's empty stomach clenches in fresh apprehension. Something about this machine is _wrong_ , more than anything they've done to him yet.

Again, clamps are placed to keep his head still, and he is made to bite down on something rubbery that keeps his teeth separated almost like a horse's bit. Then cold metal presses against his temples and the inaudible humming begins to vibrate through his skull like the first pricklings of a vicious headache, and he hears one of his captors say, "That's where we're starting? Isn't this half again as much as they used on Rogers?"

"Rogers was still human," another voice says impatiently. "Why did you think we were running all those tests? I've been doing nothing but calibrating this thing for the past three days."

If they say anything else, Loki doesn't hear it, because someone flips a switch and the humming changes to a shriek that feels like a spike through his brain. Very distantly he is aware of his body convulsing, of something like electricity tearing through him again, but it is nothing next to the cacophony in his head. It is like the void all over again but _inside_ him, chewing holes in all his senses and thoughts and memories all the way down to the hard wounded little core of him, and he can do nothing against this onslaught because it is everywhere at once. It is agony, violation, absolute _wrongness_ , and it wants to make him a void too, eating away at everything that is _Loki_ until only a broken shell remains.

He doesn't try to run from it, to flee more deeply into himself than he has ever done before, but frantic instinct overrides any semblance of choice or rational thought. His mind can no more welcome this invasion than his body would a knife to the gut.

He doesn't know what happens after that, if he manages to hide or the emptiness devours him; but he goes away somewhere he doesn't have to feel anything, and he doesn't care about anything else.

(Somewhere, near his impossibly distant body, a voice might be saying, "Okay, we got it, shut it down," but wherever Loki has gone, this does not seem to matter either.)

* * *

He wakes with a jolt and no idea of how much time has passed. The new machine is gone, the room is dimmer than usual, and when he raises his head to look around, he sees no one. It is probably nighttime again then, but—something feels different. Perhaps he has been unconscious a great deal longer than normal. He feels more nearly whole than he has at any point since he fell from the Bifrost, and he doesn't know what to make of that, or why his captors would decide to let him recover any more than he did after his arrival.

His _seidr_ feels burned down to nearly nothing, as if he used up whatever was left to protect himself, and so he cannot use it to heal himself or even to cast a helpful illusion. But physically he is stronger, he is sure of that, and he can sense nothing newly wrong in his mind. Whatever they tried to do, it does not seem to have worked.

He realizes, belatedly and abruptly, that he is not lying on the metal table anymore. Instead they have moved him to a low cot—a _bed_ , unbelievably comfortable compared to the way he has spent the past days or weeks, and he can feel restraints on his wrists but nowhere else. Not even metal—leather, perhaps. Padded.

Whatever they tried to do, it did not work—but they clearly seem to believe it did.

Loki sits up slowly and his body protests at the movement, but the simple fact that he _can_ move is enough of a novelty to push aside the lingering ache in his bones. He is clothed, too, in a simple robe much like that worn by the scientists who cut him apart. This might all be a trap, and yet he does not care. It is the best chance they've given him to escape, one way or another.

He wrenches off the restraints and scrambles to the low counter nearby. A tray of perfectly clean instruments gleams in the dimness, and Loki's breath tightens in his chest at the sight of them. He knows intimately what each one feels like, the sharp ones like needles, the pliers, the tweezers, the drill, the knives, and he _cannot_ —

He seizes a scalpel in fingers that only shake a little and wonders if it would be best to simply drive the blade into his throat right here. He could be _done_ then at last, finish what he attempted on the Bifrost, rid the Realms of one more monster—put himself forever beyond the reach of his captors' knives and needles, his false family's rejection and hatred—

And then he realizes he has already delayed too long. The shrill alarm is faint and distant but his hearing is still keen, and of course they must have been alerted when he freed himself from the bed. There is no time to ensure the deed is done properly. It will have to be the other kind of escape first, then.

Clutching the scalpel, Loki forces open the room's only door and peers out into a long, nearly featureless corridor. Gray floor, gray ceiling, gray walls, a few metal doors, no windows or anything else to give him a sense of direction, so he simply turns left and limps down the hallway as quickly as he can.

He doesn't get very far. He is stronger, but he is not healed; his limbs tremble with weakness and disuse, his lungs ache, and when he stumbles and flings one hand against the wall for balance, he feels something inside him give way. He gags, spits blood onto the floor, staggers on a few more paces—hears the alarm again, many pounding footsteps, and then he comes to another corridor perpendicular to this one and the soldiers are nearly on him.

The scalpel is all wrong for throwing and he only has the one weapon. He shoves off the wall and lunges across the mouth of the new hallway, momentum and a spike of frantic adrenaline giving him the strength to run.

Something _smashes_ into his shoulder, his back, his arm, and he crashes to the floor, limbs tangling, body spasming out of his control. It's the lightning again, from a distance this time, but it's less and if he can just _get up_ —

Another bolt of it, dead center on his spine, shouts he can barely hear over the ringing in his ears, and then hands, yanking at his arms, aftershocks shaking him apart so his body refuses to obey. He strikes out wildly with the scalpel and hits empty air, and then his arms are wrenched up and back, his face pressed to the floor, and something stabs _into_ his spine and pours a torrent of electricity into his body. Everything overloads.

* * *

Pain drags him back toward consciousness. He fights it, because he wants to be dead, he had his chance and he _wasted_ it, again, the Norns will not even let him die, and if self-loathing could kill he thinks he would finally be out of their reach.

But he is alive, and this time the pain is sharp and intense, radiating outward from his wrists and ankles. His arms are pulled out at an angle, too, straining his shoulders. When he manages to turn his head enough to look, he understands why: this table has jointed extensions for his arms, so they can lie parallel or perpendicular to his body or any degree in between, perhaps for easier access. And he is pinned to these metal arms by a bar _through_ each wrist.

He stares for a moment, uncomprehending, and then tugs on his arm. Agony erupts in his bones, and for long moments he can only lie still, choking on it. When he can think again, he realizes his ankles must be pinned the same way.

A few of the scientists are here again, outside his line of sight, but he catches bits of their conversation: "…try again?", "a higher level would kill it," "yeah, of course Pierce is pissed, he thought he was getting another winter soldier," "just want it alive." Loki understands, gradually, that he has gone from a potential field asset to a mere specimen. They will not kill him—they will keep him like this indefinitely.

He hears, "Okay, let's open it up," and this he doesn't understand, until a blade slices down his sternum, down his ribcage, all the way to his navel, cutting neatly through skin and muscle, and then they peel his chest open.

That day, Loki learns for the first time that all their experimentation could have been worse from the beginning. Before, they had to take care not to damage him permanently, because they had plans for him that required him whole, sound of body if not of mind, and now they are acting under no such restrictions. They no longer need him functioning or technically ambulatory; they only need him alive so they can continue their work. That usually means conscious, too, as the most reliable way of ensuring that he is not plunging into shock, so once again he is awake when they cut him apart.

And this is what they do, over and over again, for far too many days to count. They delve deep into his core to examine his organs, forcing the shift between forms again to see how his insides change. They cut out more pieces of him, from everywhere they can reach. They make him breathe more poisonous gases, and rather than simply observing his responses as they did before, they take samples of lung tissue to study directly. Some organs they remove entirely, whatever they decide he can spare; others they damage in various ways to observe the regenerative process. He thinks they do this with every distinct organ at least once, often more than once to determine what methods and substances will slow his healing. They force poisons down his throat and slice open his stomach to see the results for themselves. They prod at his heart with their jolts of electricity, making it twitch out of control or stop altogether and then shocking it back into a normal rhythm.

His skeleton is just as interesting as his softer tissues. Before they confined themselves to small, relatively unimportant bones like fingers. Now they pull apart the major joints at knee, elbow, shoulder; now they use their machines to break his ribs and legs and arms, by crushing or cutting or snapping or twisting. Sometimes they apply substances directly to the bone first, acid or fire or ice. They cut off fingers, sometimes reattaching them immediately, sometimes much later.

He remembers thinking, early on, that eventually he will grow desensitized to this, that his nerves will give up or his brain will simply stop interpreting the sensation of pain, but it never happens—he never becomes used to the feeling of blades slicing through his flesh, of metal clamps cracking his bones, of tiny buzzing saws and whirring drills eating into him, of hands probing through his insides. Every fresh wound is agony, every moment he lives is as unbearable as the last; every waking after a period of blessed unconsciousness is new despair. Sometimes, when he can speak, he begs answers of the universe—why didn't Odin leave him to die on Jotunheim, why did Frigga allow him into her home, why didn't Thor kill him on the Bifrost, why _damn you all_ didn't someone snuff out his worthless life before he could hurt and destroy and find himself reduced to _flesh_ —

But there is never any reply.


	3. the soldier

_Previous warnings still apply, just from a different perspective. This chapter also makes use of some dehumanizing language. Please let me know if I should add any other specific warnings._

* * *

The asset is in the capital again. He doesn't know exactly how many times he's been here, or how long since the last time, but these facts are never part of his missions, so they don't matter. Returning to the capital means he is between missions, and that is the important part.

He'll need to shut down soon. Right now, he has a smaller but critical job to do: acting as Secretary Pierce's bodyguard for the day. It's been quiet, but the asset has stayed alert. He doesn't get bored. (He's heard others use the word, and he knows what it means, but not in any way that might relate to him.)

At the moment, Pierce is visiting one of the lower underground levels of the Triskelion, which holds experiments that are potentially dangerous (and, often, secret except to those at very specific clearance levels). Prisoners too, sometimes. All the walls down here are made of concrete, interrupted by occasional signs and doors. The asset has been here before, but he doesn't know when or for what reason. (Does that matter? He doesn't think it matters.)

"One more stop," Pierce tells him, pausing to press his eye against a retinal scanner next to one of the thick metal doors. "Then I think you and I can both turn in for the day."

No response seems required, so the asset doesn't try to make one. As far as he can remember, this is typical for Pierce: he talks to the asset more than the normal handlers do, often about seemingly irrelevant things that don't connect to any mission, almost the way he talks to his agents. He never really seems to expect a response, so the asset doesn't know why Pierce does it. This doesn't concern him; if he needs to know, Pierce or a handler will tell him. They always tell him what he needs to know, so it follows that he doesn't need to know anything they don't tell him.

The door unseals with a hiss and swings inward. Pierce steps inside, followed by the asset, and closes the door behind them. There are three people inside, two men and a woman, and one of the men immediately approaches Pierce to talk to him. Listening to their conversation isn't part of the asset's current assignment, so he stays a pace back (only one exit; best if he keeps close) and swiftly takes in the details of the room. It seems to be a combination lab and operating theater, with various instruments on the countertops that line three of the four walls, and drawers and cabinets labeled with their contents. At one wall is a raised platform with a few utilitarian chairs on it; behind that, a glassed-in observation booth with two more chairs and a bank of monitors.

In roughly the center of the room is a metal table, on which is lying what the asset assumes is a corpse, its chest cavity opened for autopsy. No, not a corpse: as he watches, the body gasps in a shallow breath, its exposed lungs moving beneath its bloody ribs, its heart visibly twitching. There is surprisingly little blood on the table; most of it seems to have been directed by grooves in the metal into a central funnel, and underneath, blood drips into a plastic container. The body—the experimental subject—is nearly skeletal, most likely sustained only by the IV trailing from one arm. Another tube leads from a vein in its other arm, this one thicker and full of blood being drained away, and wires run from monitors to sensors at its temples. Part of its hair has been shaved to provide patches of clear skin for the electrodes, but most of the hair on its head remains, long and lank and dark.

(Body on a table, dark hair, injured—something about this niggles at him, as if it's familiar somehow. One of his earlier assignments?)

The subject's arms are bolted to hinged cross-beams that are currently perpendicular to the table in a position that is oddly familiar—the asset finds a word for it, _cruciform_ , and doesn't know why the word is in his head at all. It's not just bound to the table, he realizes; there are metal rods through the center of its wrists and ankles that keep it pinned flat. The asset notes the placement of the bolts, which catch solidly on the bones of the subject's arms and legs rather than the finer bones of its hands and feet, so as to take its weight when held upright (why does he think the rods would need to take its weight? There is no indication that the table has a vertical orientation, but the idea remains) or to keep it from shattering those thinner bones to pull free.

The subject's head lists to the side then, its half-open eyes glazed with pain, and catches sight of the asset. For a long moment it just looks at him, visibly struggling to focus, and then its eyes widen and the beeping from one of the monitors accelerates as its heart rate speeds up.

"Thor?" it gasps. It tries to raise its head, open chest heaving, wild gaze fixed on the asset. "Brother—please—help me, kill me, _please_ —"

Pierce has paused in his conversation and turned toward the table, eyebrows raised. "I thought we weren't letting it speak."

"Uh, yes sir," the scientist says, "it shouldn't be able to."

"Funny," Pierce says dryly. "I could've sworn it just tried to talk to my asset."

"We haven't gotten a response like that before," the female scientist says, glancing toward the asset. "That's kind of interesting."

"Please," the subject whimpers. "Brother, if you ever cared for me at all, just kill me, please!"

Pierce looks pointedly at the IV stand. "Not, I assume, a response you were going for, or one that's particularly relevant to anything we're doing here."

"Turn up the drip," the scientist by Pierce says. "But write this down. It's never been coherent at this dosage before."

" _Please_ ," the subject moans. The other male scientist injects something into the IV bag, and slowly the subject's eyelids flutter shut, its breathing becoming even more rapid and shallow. The asset watches it a little longer, but its eyes don't open again.

"Well, we'll get out of your hair," Pierce says. "Send me that report when you get it compiled." He gestures toward the door, and the asset fallows him back out into the concrete hallway.

They're nearing the elevators when the asset asks, "Do I have a brother?"

Pierce glances at him sharply, and then he smiles. "Every man in this base—in this organization—is your brother, every woman your sister."

"Yes sir," the asset says. He doesn't think that's what he meant, but he knows when to stop asking questions, even though he still doesn't have an answer. He's not disturbed, or unsettled, and it's not even accurate to say he dislikes what he saw, but he feels…something very far removed from the satisfaction of a completed mission, and he doesn't know why.

* * *

Later that evening, when he's alone in his temporary quarters, the asset pulls up electronic records on the test subject who called him _brother_. He hasn't been ordered to do this, but most of the experiment files aren't specifically off limits either, and he hasn't been able to shake the sense of…something…that's clung to him since he left the lab.

He learns that the body on the table is designated Subject NM-376, acquired roughly a year ago in the New Mexico desert. The file lists possible connections to the Asgardian Thor and his hammer, both of which fell to Earth outside Puente Antiguo and came into contact with SHIELD—but in this case, STRIKE was able to pick up the subject before other divisions of SHIELD could learn about it. The subject, presumably also an alien, fell to Earth in a more destructive manner than either Thor or the hammer did, and the severity of its injuries aided in its capture and raised interest in its durability and healing abilities.

There is some partially redacted information about a program for which the subject was intended; the file only says that after an attempt was made to wipe its memories (and why does that, too, nudge at something in the asset's thoughts?), the subject was removed from consideration and is now to be used only for medical experimentation. What follows is an exhaustive record of the procedures and tests that have been carried out on the subject, many of which are cross-referenced with similar experiments on humans (of these, a surprisingly high number were carried out in the 1940s, and not always by HYDRA). The asset tabs over to the next section, which consists of tables listing all the raw data acquired from the various experiments. The subject has two physical forms, one that corresponds fairly closely to superhumans on record except stronger and more resilient; the other looks more alien, with cold blue skin and raised markings. Every piece of information in the file is duplicated, gathered at least once from each form, beginning with basic stats like weight and core temperature.

After that is a list of all the samples taken from the subject's body, with attachments detailing amounts, additional tests performed, and chemical composition: saliva, blood, lymph, stomach acid, spinal fluid, semen, urine, bone, muscle, skin, marrow, inner-ear fluid, teeth, hair, nails, cartilage, synovial fluid, mucus, and tissues from every possible organ, even the brain. Then there is data from the actual experiments on the body: temperature at which different parts freeze or burn, time to unconsciousness when deprived of oxygen, pain response in various situations, speed of healing for an extensive list of injuries, ability of severed tendons to repair themselves, force required to break different bones or pull apart joints, reactions to a long list of drugs and toxins, regenerative capacity for most organs, time to necrosis when circulation is cut off from a finger, time to necrosis in a fully amputated finger, possible delay between amputating a finger and reattaching for full healing, amount of physical damage that can heal independently without stitches or other assistance, blood loss sustained without losing consciousness, effects of radiation, attempts to drain off subject's apparent supernatural powers for other uses, reactions to electricity at varying durations and voltages, effects of exposure to vacuum, and more.

There is nothing to explain the hint of familiarity the asset felt, or why the subject in turn seemed to recognize the asset.

This is not his assignment, and he needs to rest; he'll have another mission soon, or possibly stasis or reconditioning or a full reset (he isn't entirely sure where those terms come from or why he knows them, only that they have all happened before and he doesn't enjoy any of it), and everything goes a little better when he's slept properly first.

But—

He has access to the lower levels, probably even to the room where experiments on this particular subject are carried out, and it's late enough that the area is unlikely to be heavily populated. And he might learn something important.

So he makes his way back down, and he encounters very few people—some night-shift techs, the occasional janitor, no one who questions his presence. He's known here, after all, even if he barely recognizes most of the people who recognize him. He doesn't need to check any signs to find the lab; his memory has always been good for maps and landmarks, if not as much for the actual events of his life.

The lab door responds to the asset's retinal scan, and he closes it quietly behind himself. It's empty except for the body on the table, which looks much as it did earlier—pale, except where it is bruised or burned or its blood-red insides are showing. A sheet of plastic covers its still-open torso, probably to protect it until the scientists come back tomorrow, and its arms have been pulled in closer to its sides. Its chest moves as it breathes, far too rapidly, and its eyes are squeezed shut, its face lined with pain. However long it's been alone tonight, it doesn't seem to have fallen asleep.

The asset still doesn't know why he's here.

He clears his throat, and the subject's eyes open blearily. Again it can't seem to focus on him at first, but when it does, its breath catches and its fingers twitch as if it wants to reach out.

"Thor?" it asks hoarsely. "You are—" It squints at him, and then its shoulders slump and it lets its head fall back. "No. You're not him, are you."

"Probably not," the asset says.

"You could kill me anyway," the subject says, its voice dull. "You could—they have knives here. It would be easy. You could do it before anyone knows—"

"Why would I do that?" the asset asks.

The subject chokes out something that might be a laugh. "Because you have no reason not to? Because you are not one of those damned scientists? Because you have even a shred of mercy in your heart?"

"Killing you isn't my mission," the asset says.

" _Please_ ," the subject says, turning its head again to catch the asset's gaze. Its eyes are green, red-rimmed, desperate. "Please, I am begging you, just end this."

"Would Thor kill you?" the asset asks.

The subject lets out another gasping laugh, this time with a definite edge of hysteria. "Yes. Probably. Even he might think I've paid sufficiently for my crimes."

"You thought I was him," the asset says. "Who is he?"

"My brother," the subject says, eyes falling shut. "Well. Not my brother. I thought…but it doesn't matter. You look a bit like him."

"But I'm not?" the asset says, unable to keep the last word from turning up at the end in a question. He frowns. "I'm not."

The subject opens its eyes again, studying him. "Oh," he breathes after a moment. "Oh. I see. You're the winter soldier, aren't you?"

"…yes." The asset. The Winter Soldier. His designation doesn't really matter.

"And you don't know who you are."

The asset's eyes narrow. "Of course I do."

"No," the subject says. "You don't know why I called you _brother_. You don't know your own history, your own name. Do you?"

The asset hesitates. He does. Doesn't he? It hasn't mattered before.

Has it? Would he know if it had?

"You don't," the subject says. The asset doesn't respond, and it presses, "They scoured you out. Yes? You don't know who or what you are because they took it—and they have to keep taking it or you might remember something, and then you might start questioning the missions they give you. Why you listen to everything they tell you. Why you obey them. Does that sound about right—Rogers?"

"That's not my name," the asset says automatically, but suddenly he wonders.

"Are you _sure_ ," the subject says, and a flicker of satisfaction enters its expression when the asset hesitates.

It isn't. Is it? No one here calls him that. He's sure—almost sure. And yet—there is…something, again. Something about the name that resonates, that feels _true_. "Who are you?" he asks.

"I am—" The subject grimaces. "Loki. I am still Loki, but…that is all."

"Loki," the asset repeats. That's familiar too. Almost familiar, anyway, like the sight of a dark-haired man on a table is almost familiar. Before he can stop himself, he asks, "How do you know me?"

And Loki smiles, bloody and sharp. "Get me out of here and I'll tell you."

The asset ( _Rogers_ ) stiffens. "That's definitely not my mission."

"Coming down here to stare at me wasn't your mission either," Loki says, "and here you are. You want to know, don't you? You're curious. You remember _something_ , or you wouldn't be here. How long do you think they'll let you hold on to that? How long do you suppose it'll be, if you walk out of here now, before they clean out your mind again—all those inconvenient _questions_ , hints of personality, anything that isn't exactly what they want to see, that isn't _the mission_ —and you forget you even wondered if you'd ever been something more?"

Rogers' fists clench, but he doesn't move. He doesn't know why—why he's here, why he carries out HYDRA's orders, why a dark-haired man on a table gave him such a jolt of that _something_ he can't name, why any of this matters.

He doesn't know why he's so sure—and becoming increasingly sure by the second—that it does matter.

"You're on one of the subterranean levels," he says. "Seven floors underground. What do you think I can do, just walk you out of here?"

"And I'm sure there are cameras, and all sorts of other security systems, and if much changes in this room they will know soon enough, and you yourself are probably monitored as well." Loki lets his head fall back again, breathing hard. "Begin by removing these tubes from my arms and I can scrape together enough magic to shield our passage."

Rogers (it's funny, how quickly the name has started to feel natural and _right_ ) frowns at him. "So you'll—what, make us invisible? If you can do that, why can't you just teleport yourself out of here?"

"Because there is a _massive_ difference in the amount of strength required for two activities that have absolutely nothing to do with one another," Loki snaps. "Illusions—bending light—that's easy. Child's play, literally. A few moments without these poisons and I will at least be able to do that. So. Do you want to know who you are, or do you intend to simply keep standing there?"

Rogers hesitates a moment longer, but there's really nothing to consider. He yanks out both IV feeds, making Loki flinch, and lets them fall so they drip on the floor.

"Chest next," Loki says, sounding a little winded. "Just—take off whatever they put on me and move the skin back in place so I can start healing. I'll need—bandages, somewhere—" He gasps as Rogers peels away the plastic sheeting and flattens the flaps of skin back over Loki's chest cavity. At least nothing's actively spilling out yet. "Now—hands—"

Rogers leans over to inspect one of Loki's wrists, then the underside of the metal arm. There's a bolt on the bottom that will probably release the rest of it if he unscrews it, and then he can just yank the bar straight out. Loki is watching him, expression strained, and Rogers says, "Can you keep quiet for this, or should I find something to gag you?"

"That won't be necessary," Loki says tightly. "I've…had practice. Just do it, please."

Rogers shrugs and twists off the bolt. Loki's breath hitches, but otherwise he doesn't react, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched as he waits. Rogers takes hold of the bar and wiggles it a little to loosen it, and Loki makes a thin sound of pain.

"Hold that thought," Rogers says, and scans the cabinets for the right supplies. He comes back with a box full of rolled gauze bandages, which—for lack of anywhere better to put it—he places across Loki's thighs. While Loki is still half-heartedly glaring at him for that, he grips the metal rod and jerks it straight up.

Skin rips and the wound fills with blood. Loki arches away from the table with a bitten-off howl and sags back, panting, as Rogers stuffs a wad of gauze in the hole and wraps up the wrist.

He moves to the other one to repeat the process. Loki flinches the first time he touches anything, but he manages to stay nearly silent for this one, only moaning when Rogers has to touch the wound to bandage it.

Rogers stops at the foot of the table, eyeing the bolts through Loki's ankles and the massive bruising in his legs that probably indicates broken bones. "You won't be able to walk, will you?"

"Well spotted," Loki gasps. His ruined chest is heaving and he's pulled his arms in closer to his body, but otherwise he hasn't moved. "You look passably strong. Surely you can manage to— _hnn_." He breaks off as Rogers loosens the first ankle bolt. "Carry me. Or find something in this miserable place that can."

Rogers casts an appraising glance over the scrawny body in front of him, compares it to the weight measurements he remembers, nods, and yanks out the bolt. When the last one comes out, Loki curls inward, rolling painfully to his side and dislodging the now half-empty box of bandages. Rogers sets it behind Loki's head and hunts down a hospital gown. The less Loki is able to track blood on everything, the better.

When he crosses back to the table, Loki is sitting up with his legs over the edge, swaying a little, head hanging, arms drawn protectively to his chest. The skin there is still loose, blood dripping to the floor. Rogers feels another twinge he doesn't understand and sets the gown aside to grab the bandages again. "I should wrap up your chest."

Loki nods without lifting his head. He can't raise his arms far at all, it turns out, so bandaging his torso is a little awkward, but Rogers manages. Blood has already pretty well soaked through the other bandages, and the new one covering his chest will probably be saturated soon too, but it's better than nothing. He helps Loki into the hospital gown—also a slightly tricky process—and then, figuring there's no point in delaying, he reaches for the remaining sensors.

"Wait," Loki says. For a long moment he just sits there, forehead creased in concentration but otherwise appearing to do absolutely nothing, and then a copy of his body appears, still lying prone on the table. The real Loki appears to be sitting inside his own chest.

"And nobody's gonna think _that_ looks weird?" Rogers says.

"If anyone has been watching for the past few minutes, things are already a bit more complicated," Loki says. He looks up at Rogers, expression already pinched with exhaustion. "I've set the glamour on myself as well. We will be able to see one another, but otherwise we should go unnoticed."

"Okay," Rogers says, detaches the sensors, and scoops Loki into his arms. The alien makes a faint noise like he's just had the breath punched out of him and seizes Rogers' jacket in a white-knuckled grip.

" _Carefully_ ," Loki says through gritted teeth. "Jostle me too much and I am liable to vomit on you, and if I pass out, the glamour will fail."

"Noted," Rogers says, and doesn't add what he's thinking, which is that Loki had better be tougher than he looks or they won't get far at all. He's even lighter and bonier than Rogers expected, his face sweating and nearly ashen, and like this Rogers can feel him shaking, feel the roughness of his breathing and the wrongness of many of his bones. Loki is almost a dead weight in his arms, able to hold on by hooking his elbow around Rogers' neck but unable to do anything else, so getting the door open requires a little careful maneuvering, as does drawing his sidearm so he can defend them if necessary. If the gun does become necessary, though, he's not sure how much good it will really do.

But he's already committed, so he goes.

The trip back up is an eerie one. If Rogers wasn't questioned before, now he isn't even noticed. He makes the journey in near-total silence, broken only by the occasional whispered command from Loki to be mindful of senses other than sight that could still give them away. So Rogers is quiet and careful, waits to enter the elevator until a janitor is exiting, and leans on the "close door" button that will take them directly to the floor he wants. Loki is tense the whole way, and Rogers feels it when his breath hitches in pain at nearly every movement, but the alien stays quiet too.

The elevator stops at one of the higher parking-garage levels, still underground. Rogers doesn't think he's ever been on the main floors of the Triskelion or in the lobby, and he doesn't go there now; instead he heads for an innocuous-looking steel door marked as an electrical room, and from there to another door disguised as part of a shelving unit. This one responds to his retinal scan as well, opening onto a long, dim corridor.

"Tracking chip," Loki says suddenly. "You have—in your arm. I can feel it now. Let me—" He awkwardly twists his right arm under Rogers' left, breath hissing between his teeth, and presses their skin together.

"The hell are you doing," Rogers starts to say, and then he stumbles and nearly drops Loki as a static jolt snaps through him.

"Apologies," Loki says breathlessly. "I believe I've shorted it out. But I cannot hold the glamour much longer, so I suggest you get us as far away from here as possible."

"This is a service tunnel," Rogers says. "Goes under the Potomac into Arlington and connects to the Metro system—we can come out by the Rosslyn station. Shouldn't be many people around."

"Good," Loki murmurs, his voice starting to fade. "I may…need to rest." True to his word, he seems to slip into an uneasy doze until Rogers has made his way through the tunnel and a few more doors and is climbing the stairs to the surface. Then he rouses, his head turning toward the night air.

Rogers steps off the stairway and pauses. "Which way now?"

"I've no idea," Loki says. "Just…keep walking. You choose. That…will be novel for you. Won't it?"

"Probably," Rogers says, and doesn't add that he has no idea how to choose. But he knows how to stick to the shadows and stay out of sight, magic invisibility or not, so that is what he does as he takes them further away from HYDRA and into the night.

* * *

 **Additional notes:  
**

1\. Fic title is from "Stripped" by Shiny Toy Guns, which otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with this fic. (You would not _believe_ how much I struggled with a title for this. Like, how hard can it be to find appropriate song lyrics?)

2\. I've labeled this "pre-slash" because actually getting to a slashy point didn't quite work in the context of this story, but I wrote it with the idea that it would happen eventually. Plus here we've got Steve carrying around a mostly naked Loki, so...at least there's that?

3\. **I intend to expand on this story, which is why it has a lot of loose ends** (what else is different in this AU based on the major changes in the Captain America timeline, do they actually get away, if so why did they get away relatively easily, how does Steve react when he finds out Loki's mostly full of shit as far as knowing anything about him goes, does Steve recover any memories, do I get to start actually calling him "Steve" at some point, can I sneak in a reference to _Fallout 3_ because that also takes place in DC and I'm a giant nerd, etc.). For the purposes of this exchange, though, I figured this was a fairly complete story as it was, even aside from the fact that it's already pretty damn long. I might add chapters to this fic, or I might just turn it into a series. If that interests you, please follow me!


	4. FANART OMG

My MCU AU Fest recipient made some AMAZING fanart for my fic. It's possible I made a noise audible only to dogs when I saw that I HAD FANART, because I've never had anyone spontaneously make fanart for my fic and it's SUPER EXCITING. The picture itself is a gorgeous, kind of symbolic representation of Loki as HYDRA's test subject (so, probably NSFW for some gore) and it's just REALLY COOL. There _would_ be a direct link in my profile except all the non-FFN links in my profile are now redirecting to that profile even though they look just fine in the editor, and of course I can't make proper links here at all because FFN is butts, so I'll just say that everything can be found on AO3 at **archiveofourown . org** **/ users / 100indecisions** (remove the spaces).

 **Nov. 6:** Now using a cropped version of neurovicky's art for the cover image! You can see the full picture at archiveofourown works / 4364546


	5. To be continued

...right now! The continuation to this story is finally going live at "all this that is more than a wish is a memory," so head over there to read more. I would link but, you know, FFN.


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